Week in Review: The Cure

It was a relatively quiet week in K-pop, but in K-dramaland things are definitely falling in to place for fall. Here are a few highlights of the week and hopefully one will be ‘The Cure’ to any K-pop withdrawals that may ail you.

Looks like rumors that Sistar‘s Soyu and Show Me the Money 2 Mad Clown contestant were dating proved to be false (maybe) as they claimed that the reason they were hanging out together was for their duet “Stupid Love.” (MBN, wowtv)

Congratulations to Huh Gak who announced he will be getting married to his first love on October 3rd. His bride to be was his first love back in middle school, they met again after 13 years and began dating last February. (itmedia)

Looks like SM Entertainment isn’t the only company of the big three in K-pop planning to branch out and take over the K-pop entertainment world. JYP Entertainemnt in a recent business meeting also laid out plans to expand into the tourism industry (conducting their own fan tours) as well as broadening their entertainment management business by signing on more actors as well as producing their own movies, dramas, and musicals. Also expect them to debut a few new groups soon. Of course YG Entertainment has also been dabbling in other endeavors, too. (etoday)

Did everyone get their tickets to the US dates for Infinite‘s One Great Step World Tourtoday? Wish I did–sigh.

Will there be a collaboration between Pharrel Williams, G-Dragon and his noona–the artist Mina Kwon? If these tweets from them are to be believed, definitely… maybe.

In K-pop:

Drunken Tiger is back under new management as Tiger JK, his wife Yoon Mi-rae and Bizzy formed Feel Ghood Music after severing ties with Jungle Entertainment. Their first foray on their own again is the album The Cure which features nine tracks and shares with fans, in lyrical terms, the trials and tribulations that Tiger JK has experienced in his life. The title track was inspired by Tiger JK’s father, former music journalist Suh Byung-hoo, and while the song is shadowed and melancholic there is a tiny sliver of shining hope within its depths.

Rookie producers Rphabet, who penned hits for Infinite (“Destiny”) and Tasty (“You Know Me”), released their own track “Black Suit” featuring San E, Demicat dropped the psychedelic MV for “Locked in the Dream,” Lim Kim released her “Voice” featuring Swings, Park Jin-young (whispers JYP…) is over all the glitz in his latest release “Had Enough Parties” and Voice of Korea contestant Shi Cho-i collaborated with Go! Dandy Boys for the song “By Your Side.” Sometimes you just can’t beat a band playing live.

Cho Yong-pil released what has got to be one of the cutest MV of 2013 for the song “Romance” starring two of south Korea’s most popular child CF models Moon Mason and Aleyna Yilmaz (both of whom also appeared in different seasons of the K-variety show Hello Baby. The song should probably have been called “Finding Love in an E-mart.” It’s a good song, but is made even better by a great MV.

Anyone know exactly what Core Contents Media is up to nowadays? I certainly can’t make rhyme or reason of their handling of their artists with member changes, additions, name changes and come backs coming out of nowhere. Here’s F-VE Dolls latest “Can You Love Me” featuring T-ara‘s Dani in a song which almost seems like a plea from CCM to get back into the fans’ good graces.

BTS returned with their sophomore effort “N.O” which is a hard hitting tale of standing up to conformity and chasing after your own dreams and not that of others. I like their music and their message–they can definitely ‘talk the talk,” but I’m not yet convinced that BTS can “walk the walk.” They may be on the right path, though. Seize the day, boys.

Bizniz teased “Get it Wet” featuring Mighty Mouth‘s Shorry J, Melody Day released “All About” from the Master’s Sun OST, 15&‘s Park Ji-min released “I Love You” for the Jung Yi, Goddess of FireOST, Top Band season 1 winners Toxic released “Turning” for the Two Weeks OST and LEDApple‘s Hanbyul did a fun cover of Robin Thicke‘s “Blurred Lines“–with, thankfully, no Miley substitute twerking up on him.

It was an interesting week for the weekly music shows as Music Coreraised eyebrows for not having rankings this week–which it attributed to its live free concert recording at Incheon Airport this weekend for its Chuseok special and that this week’s episode was pre-recorded so they decided to not do the ranking, this week’s Music Bank was shot in Turkey and if you haven’t heard yet–not only will G-Dragon and Seungri perform on this week’s Inkigayothey will also be special color MCs adding their own comments and opinions to the broadcast.

In K-drama:

Posters for Choi Ji-woo‘s first project in two years have been released. The K-drama Suspicious Housekeeper will debut on SBS’ Monday’Tuesday slot on September 23rd after the conclusion of Empire of Gold. The show is about how Choi Ji-woo’s character becomes the housekeeper for a man and his four children–helping them find their way after the death of their mother. But this is no Mary Poppins as there is definitely more to her character than a efficient and caring housekeeper as is hinted at in the show’s posters. (xsportsnews)

BoA impressed fans and critics alike with her acting debut in the two episode KBS2 drama special Hope for Dating along with ZE:A‘s Siwan and Daniel Choi. Fans also got in a tizzy over her kiss scenes with Siwan–apparently no standard lip-smashing there. Unfortunately the show was pitted against one of the hottest K-dramas out there right now, Master’s Sun whose episodes this week continued to creep toward 20% with a rating of 19.3% and had a cliffhanger that left fans breathless. Also doing well in the second spot was Two Weeks, which I believe to be the best all around dramas outright now, at 11%. If the drama is so good why is it in second place? Because of the things it does to a fans’ heart as Lee Jun-ki‘s character fights to stay alive to save his daughter’s life–I literally dread to see what will happen every week although I love the show.

It seems impossible that we’re only a couple of weeks away from the K-drama mega fest that will be October. But recently we have definite proof as a lot of behind-the-scenes pictures and drama posters have been released. Heirs, Medical Top Team, Answer Me 1994, and Future’s Choice, etc… exactly when is a K-drama fan supposed to be able to get some sleep in October!

In K-variety:

The new couples of pianist Yoon Han & actress Lee So-yeon and Superstar K4 finalist Jung Joon-young & actress Jeong Yumi debuted on We Got Married this week, what do you all think? Not impressed, but not discouraged yet either. (SportsSeoul)

The latest episode of Immortal Song 2 featuring the songs from Nam Jin was an great episode including some awesome performances from the likes of Ivy,ZE:A, LED Apple, EXO, and a winning performance from Ailee.

Although it was able to garner a lot of support with many actors, idols and other entertainers participating in the show, Star Diving Show Splash has been cancelled. The producers decided to cancel the show after many of the participants were injured, some seriously. Whatever footage they had left was put into the fourth episode of the show which was aired this week.

Did y’all see the battle between the trainees of YGE and JYPE? On the latest episode of WIN: Who Is Next, Yang Hyun-suk takes Team A & B to JYP Entertainment headquarters to ‘battle’ it out with JYPE’s male rookies. This kind of friendly competition, I like. More than a few of us have been curious about how these little competitions between YGE and JYPE trainees have been done–I remember hearing about it on Family Outing, how Rain battled Se7en and Big Bang took on 2PM when they were all still rookies–and it was great to see how it all goes down, even it was for ratings this time around. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really impressed with any of the performances from both sides–so, yes back to the e YG and JYPE said. It looks like more epic times lie ahead as Taeyang and G-Dragon will square off as the teachers for Team A & B, respectively in next week’s episode.